Debian GNU/Linux on Inspiron 5000e

Update:

• A lot of things presented here are much easier now. For the install I did I was using a much less polished Woody distribution. It was ``unstable'' then, now it is ``testing''. If you think something described here looks too hard, you are probably right.
• 06/01/19: Last night my Inspiron completely self destructed. Its case had become progressively more and more cracked causing the HD or power to disconnect if you looked at it wrong. 5 years isn't so bad for a laptop. It died as a Debian Etch system.

  Also, Werner at TuxMobile suggested this humble document be put under a free license in case anyone wants to do something with it. So, I place it in the public domain. Do with it what you will.

Index:

• News.
• Description of system.
• Outline of installation.
• Extra features under Linux.
• Problems.
• Todo news and things to try.
• Some of my configuration/log files.
• Links to other resources.

News:

case "$1" in
resume)
/etc/init.d/gpm restart
;;
esac

Sun Jun 10 12:41:39 2001
Got gpm -tsynps2 working. I followed up on a few Google hits and tried removing (surrounded by ``#if 0 / #endif'') the following code from Linux 2.4.5's linux/drivers/char/pc_keyb.c:

static inline void handle_mouse_event(unsigned char scancode)
...
#if 0
        else if(scancode == AUX_RECONNECT){
                queue->head = queue->tail = 0;  /* Flush input queue */
                __aux_write_ack(AUX_ENABLE_DEV);  /* ping the mouse :) */
                return;
        }
#endif
...

device=/dev/psaux
responsiveness=
# repeat_type=raw
repeat_type=msc
type=synps2
append=""

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "MouseSystems"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/gpmdata"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
        Option      "Emulate3Timeout"   "50"
EndSection

Thu May 3 15:37:41 2001
Inspiron 5000 and 5000e batteries bad. As seen on this /. article. Here is Dell's press release. And here is a page to check if yours are bad. My two batteries don't have a `P' manufacturer code, so I dodged the bullet.

My system:

• Dell Inspiron 5000e
• PIII 600 MHz, 192 = (64 MB RAM from Dell + much cheaper upgrade of 128 MB from Crucial), 10 GB HD.
• 1600x1200 LCD, 16 MB ATI Rage Mobility 128.
• DVD, second battery, 3Com EtherLink III 3C589C 10base-T PCMCIA Ethernet.

Installation:

1. Prepare the HD. I wanted to keep Windows ME (I know, I know, leave me alone) at least for a while. This meant shrinking Window's partition. Here are the steps.
   1. Make a bootable system floppy. Windows ME doesn't allow ``format /s a:'' any more so one must do it with the GUI.

   2. Download fips20.zip, unzip it, read the readme, and copy the fips executable and the other needed files as described in the readme to the floppy.

   3. Defragment the HD in Windows.

   4. Boot from the floppy (choose ``minimal boot'' at the menu).

   5. Run fips. I left ~3 GB for Windows.

   6. As suggested by fips, reboot to Windows and run defrag again.

2. Download the base Debian files. This step isn't needed if you have a Debian CD (which is probably leads to a much easier install, but I am too lazy/impatient to order/burn one). You need basically 4 files. A boot and a root floppy, a set of drivers and the base system. The floppies I wrote to floppies (duh) and the drivers and base system I downloaded to my Windows partition. (I actually used slightly older set boot/root floppies which caused some problems that needed expert flailing to resolve. Using up-to-date floppies which are synced with the other files should avoid these).

   These files are probably too much to download via the modem, so unless you have a faster connection to the net you should seriously think about ordering a Debian CD instead.

   Here are the files (the links may be out of date by the time you read this, but they point to the general location):

   • rescue (boot) floppy
   • root floppy
   • drivers.tgz driver files
   • base2_2.tgz base system files
   I wrote the root/boot floppies on linux, but this can also be done under windows using rawrite. The last time I used rawrite was in `94 when I installed my first Linux (Slackware) system, so I don't have any remembered wisdom about using it.

3. Once you have the floppies written and the driver and base files downloaded, then installation is very strait-forward. As I mentioned above, the only problems I had was due to using older boot/root floppies and up-to-date driver/base files. The boot/root files were based on 2.2.15 kernel, while the newer ones are 2.2.17.

4. After installing the base system, you should have PCMCIA and, in particular, the network working. This will be needed to install everything else. I set my /etc/apt/sources.list to point at my (very) local mirror with the following lines:

         deb http://llug.sep.bnl.gov/debian potato main contrib non-free
         

   Then proceeded do install a richer system with Dselect. I knew that the XFree86 from potato was not going to work, so I didn't bother installing any X stuff yet. The main thing you want to have installed is:
   • Kernel source for latest stable kernel (2.2.17)
   • PCMCIA source (not just pre-compiled modules)
   The reason for this is I always manage to get my self in a state where I can no longer use PCMCIA to access the net. Having the source is a good safety net.

5. After Potato was installed and happy, I added this line:

         deb http://llug.sep.bnl.gov/debian woody main contrib non-free
         

   to /etc/apt/sources.list and installed all the fresh stuff from Woody.

6. After playing with woody a bit, I went to work on X by adding:

         deb http://samosa.debian.org/~branden/ woody/i386/
         (Note: XFree86 v4 is in woody proper now)
         

   to /etc/apt/sources.list and installed all X related things. The /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file which is created during the install worked okay. Choose ``r128'' as the server. Eventually I switched to the XF86Config file from Jeff Lessem and then tweaked it somewhat. Don't forget to kill `gpm' (gpm -k) before starting X. If you forget, Ctl-Alt-F2 to get a new virtual console, log in, kill gpm, do Ctl-Alt-F7 to go back to X and the mouse should be okay.

7. Getting sound working was a strait-forward ALSA install. Get the source from Debian, make sure that sound support (soundcore module) is in the kernel, unpack ALSA source and following directions in the INSTALL file. (Note, there is a Debian way to build and install this, but I have never bothered to learn it. Doing it the distribution-agnostic way works as well.)

Extra features under Linux:

• Synaptics touch pad. Using `gpm -t synps2' should give extra functionality. See News section above for how this is now working.

• DRI, Direct Rendering Interface is a way for 3D apps to talk more directly to the hard ware and to access any acceleration that a chip may supply. With the Rage 128 you can get huge speed ups for GL 3D apps. This took me a lot of time to get working, largely because I didn't read some of the documentation carefully enough, but also because somethings didn't work as stated (Note: All the non standard tricks shouldn't be needed as all this stuff is in woody proper).
  • Install the X strike force packages (see below for link), in particular, xlibmesa3, xlibosmesa3 and of course xserver-xfree86 packages.

  • Download, but don't install the libutahglx1 package. Do:

    	    dpkg -x libutahglx1_<version>.deb /tmp
    	    

    and copy /tmp/usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.2.0 to /usr/lib and run ldconfig. (note: this may not be needed in more recent version, check to see if libGLU.so.1.2.0 is already in /usr/lib before doing the copy!)

  • Get kernel source for 2.4-testXXX (I used test9) and compile your kernel, make sure you have the following in your /usr/src/linux/.config file:

          CONFIG_AGP=m
          CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=y
          CONFIG_DRM=y
          CONFIG+DRM_128=m
          

    Don't compile these into the kernel, apparently they need to be modules. Furthermore, despite the X docs, the resulting agpgart.o and r128.o modules that are created are not loaded by the X server. I had to load them by hand before starting X to get DRI to work.

  • Read /usr/share/doc/xserver-xfree86/README.DRI.gz to see how to set up your XF86Config-4 file.

  • Start X via:

          startx -- -depth 16 -dpi 133 > x.log 2>&1
          

    (you don't need the `-dpi 133' flag, but it is usefull for other reasons).

  • From X, check if things worked out.

    	xdpyinfo | grep DRI
    

    should return ``XFree86-DRI''.

  • Run `sproingies -root'. If they are moving fast enough to be a blur, then it is working.

• APM: Alan Cox's patch: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4.0test/patch-2.4.0test11-ac2.bz2 This only lets you boot with APM turned on in the kernel and not crash. It doesn't give any APM functionality

• APM: Tuxtops sells a similar machine, the Obsidian 30W and released a BIOS update which fixes APM. You can down load the bios here. It has been successfully installed on a few machines according to posts on the linux-dell-laoptop list (see below).

  Here is what I did on the OS end:

  • Recompiled the kernel (2.4.0 since it just came out!!!) with ACPI turned off. Either this new BIOS doesn't handle ACPI, or ACPI on Linux is not yet ready, and if ACPI is turned on in the Kernel, then APM is disabled.

  • Installed the apmd package. I get full reporting from apm now!!!

  • Disable ``Quiet Boot'' in the Main page in the BIOS to get rid of the Phoenix splash screen at boot. This isn't necessary, of course, I just don't like it.

• Fast auto-repeat.

  This isn't exactly an Inspiron issue, but with XFree86 4.0.2 (maybe earlier) and the Xkb extension I can get arbitrarily fast auto-repeat. Something I have desired for half a decade! To do this I used the following InputDevice section:

        
  Section "InputDevice"
          Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
          Driver          "keyboard"
          Option          "CoreKeyboard"
          Option          "AutoRepeat"    "250 30"
  #       Option          "XkbDisable"    "true"
          Option          "XkbRules"      "xfree86"
          Option          "XkbModel"      "pc101"
          Option          "XkbLayout"     "us"
          Option          "XkbVariant"    ""
          Option          "XkbOptions"    "ctrl:swapcaps"
  EndSection
  
        

  Either change the `"AutoRepeat"' line or use `xset r rate [rate] [delay]' from the command line while in X.

Problems:

• Internal Lucent `winmodem'. A driver is available at linmodems. This is a binary only driver and not surprisingly, doesn't work well. I was able to use this driver and make a simple terminal connection via minicom, but when trying to use PPP there was a page fault. When loading the driver I get version mismatches. I am currently running 2.2.17 and the driver was compiled with 2.2.12. From the linmodems page you can get to the LTModem page which as a freed driver. You can read more there, but the current version (0.9.9) supports enough to turn you Inspiron into a very expensive telephone, but doesn't have the ability to make a data connection. Good luck to them in improving their driver! In the mean time, I'll stick to a PCMCIA modem. Update: see the to do section for a way to get this modem working.

• Using Tuxtop's BIOS + XFree86 4.0.2 I get a lovely carmelization on the screen if I suspend/resume while in X. Going to a VC first and things are okay. This is a widely known bug, but I don't know if it is an APM, XFree86 or hardware issue. Currently the solution is to just not do it. I have heard of folks using APM's suspend/resume scripts to automatically force the system to go to a VC before suspend and back to X after, but haven't tried it.

• Auto-repeat goes slow after a resume from a suspend. This should be easy to fix since APM lets you run a script. Just haven't gotten to it yet.

Todo:

• Watching DVDs. LiViD is the starting place for info. I tried the oms/omi_gtk installed as Debian packages and was able to get video (cool!) but with sound, I got segfaults (kernel 2.4.0). There are known problems with those debs, so it isn't surprising. Waiting is....

• Built in modem: I got email from Sean Gollschewsky (seang at enterprise dot powerup dot com dotau) (thanks!) pointing me to: http://walbran.org/sean/linux/stodolsk/ltmodem-5.78d.tar.gz which, as I understand it, is a wrapper around the closed driver from Lucent to make it actually work. I have yet to try it, but Sean reports it working under 2.2.18pre21 and 2.4.0!

Some of my configuration/log files.

Here are a few of configuration or log files. If you have a 5000e and want to see some other file, let me know.

• /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, and resulting output: xlog.txt (ignore all the warnings from sawfish).

Links to other resources:

• Jeff Lessem's page. Fellow Debian user.
• Anton Empl's 5000 (not e) page Fellow Debian user and physicist
• Peter Teuben's page. Has many links to others.
• I5ke FAQ (not Linux centric)

The X Strike Force page. Here you can get the very latest X as debs. Read the warning about this stuff not yet being officially supported. Don't piss of these hard working people!

eGroups : linux-dell-laptops The mailing list is relatively low volume (few per day) but is a gathering place for running linux on various dell laptops (not just 5000e).

Synaptics touch padtpconfig program.

Debian Laptop Distribution - Proposal, something I ran into.